tl;dr I’m not a marketer, but I know that marketing is more than a fancy logo

Mario

A while back I saw this image in a blog post titled “Your Users Don’t Care About Your Product” (link).

In this image, you see Mario next, a Power Flower and then Mario in his fire form (technical terms can be found here).

I’m not sure if it was the video game imagery, but this resonated with me.

As a Millenial, I am highly skeptical of all things marketing. Everything is designed to get your attention, your clicks, your dollars. My generation, more than any other, cares about the ‘why’ more than the what. We want to feel something. We want to be moved.

Make Me Feel

It has come recently that the city I live in is looking at ‘revamping’ their branding after 5 or so years since the last rebrand. They paid tens of thousands of dollars to hire a big design firm to come in and whip up a fancy logo, website, and a slogan: ‘Nebraska Pathfinders’. This slogan is plastered all over the city, from official signs, magazines, and flags. To this day, I have no idea what it means. The branding job was so poorly done that I can’t imagine it has had any impact on our city at all.

I got to thinking what would make me ‘feel’ something positive toward my city. What would metaphorically earn my ‘click’. The story about the kids at an awesome after school program would. An awesome middle school teacher that is promoting technology to hundreds of students a year. The brand new aquatic center that is going to make Fremont the home of the largest square footage YMCA in the universe. The stories that can be told there sound amazing and would have my interest. A new logo, color scheme, or website would not.

This is the current branding for the city of Fremont. It makes me feel very little.

Oh, to be relentlessly relevant

In a small town like Fremont, with a struggling reputation as of late (see: immigration ordinance, Costco), we need to be focused on story telling and not branding. Fremont is an amazing community with amazing stories to be told. Yet, no one is doing that. If we want to revitalize our image and bring new life to Fremont, we need to #bangthedrum and start sharing our stories to the world.

Most of the reading I do about marketing has to do with tech, but this summarizes my feelings quite nicely.

“You’ve got to make people care, and crafting this story… establishing a strong theme with clear stakes, and supporting that with the pillars that are your [city’s] features–will help push people through the tough early stages from “don’t care” to “care.” You can’t win if you can’t first get them to play.”

These conversations about rebranding are taking place very soon. My recommendation would be to focus efforts on finding and telling the stories of the people in Fremont. Hire a PR director instead of a new logo. Get a marketer instead of a new slogan. Focus on the human element. Take control of the narrative of our town with purpose. That is how Fremont stays relevant in the future.